The Quiet Game
by Disgruntled Peony
Summary: This story operates around a very simple principle: What if Darien HADN'T been given the suicide gene in time?


Title: The Quiet Game

Author: liz_Z

E-mail: liz_Z@secret-agent.com

Category: Drama, Suspense, Angst

Rating: R

Spoilers: None

Season/Sequel info: Takes place about 18 years after the second season (yeah, I know, quite the jump) and completely disregards 'The New Stuff', sooooo....

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I don't own the premise -- heck, I don't even really own the computer I'm typing this out on. I'm just a bored teenager trying to find something to do with her acres of unwanted spare time. No suing, please. I'm not only bored, I'm broke.

Author's notes: OK, I swore I would never write a rated R fic again, but... this one kind of wrote itself. I don't mean to be this evil... really.... But sometimes I just get these images, these mental pictures, and they spawn entire mental murals, and I have to write them down.... I actually got this idea from looking at a screen capture of Darien from the Pilot. Don't ask me how something like that spawned something like this; my brain works in mysterious ways.

Warning: Ummm... there's a lot of disturbing imagery in this story. Lots of weird crap. It's hard to describe without spoiling the plot, but just remember... you've been warned. This story is rated R for a reason, and it ain't the language.

Hobbes limped into a darkened hospital room, shuffling wearily toward the man seated on the far side of it. He pulled a chair up alongside the one that was already occupied, not bothering to turn his head to look at the person seated there. He knew what he would see.

"Hey there, Fawkes."

There was no answer. Not that Hobbes had expected one in the first place.

"Figured it was about time I dropped in to say hi. It's been a while...."

It had been more than a while. It had been almost a year since his last visit. Hobbes ran a hand across the grayed hairs on the nape of his neck and grimaced at the painful reality of it. Almost a whole damn year....

That hadn't been his choice, of course. He would have visited every day if it were up to him. But it wasn't, and his damndoctors -- he didn't call them doctors any more, he called them damndoctors, all in one long slurred-together word -- had decided these visits were contributing to his depression and forced him to discontinue them. It had taken ten and a half months of coaxing, pleading and threatening to convince them otherwise.

"The damndoctors are at it again," he muttered. "Tryin' to psychoanalyze me, all that crap. They probably think I blame myself for what happened to you and Claire." He laughed bitterly. "They don't know a thing, not one damn thing."

He looked over at Darien now, knowing what he would see even as he saw it. Darien was sitting in that chair, cold silver eyes staring listlessly off into space. His brown hair, now shot through with gray, drooped in his eyes; the nurses had obviously discontinued brushing and styling it the way Hobbes had insisted they do time and time again. His arms were strapped to the chair's armrests, a precaution that had proven completely unnecessary ever since he had been brought here but that was still taken nonetheless. He looked exactly the way he had looked for the last eighteen years.

Hobbes sighed and looked away, bringing a hand up to rub his tired eyes. The damndoctors had been trying to convince him that he needed glasses, had even gotten him a pair, but he refused to wear them. He didn't care if his eyesight was starting to go bad. It wasn't like there was anything new to see, anyway. He had every corner of the hospital memorized.

"I saw Claire today," Hobbes said, his voice tinged with sadness. "She's doin' better, I think. She actually knew who I was for a minute, there." She had, too. She had called him by name, and had carried on a conversation with him for a little while. But then she had gotten that peculiar smile on her face and started talking to people that only she could see, and that was that.

Hobbes bit his lip, heaved out a long breath. "How do we always get ourselves in these situations? What'd we do to deserve the raw end of the deal?"

No answer. Sometimes, though, silence was an answer.

"Guess someone had to get it, huh? Might as well be us." Hobbes resisted the temptation to glance over at Darien again, to take in that empty face and that blank stare. He had seen it once too often; it got monotonous after a while. "You wanna play a game?" Hobbes didn't bother to wait for an answer, just continued on. "Chess. We can play chess." A soft chuckle escaped his throat. "I'll kick your ass, just like I always do." He paused for a moment, and then shook his head, the moment of brief joviality fading. "Never mind. It's gotten old. We've all gotten old."

He took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Damnit, Fawkes, why won't you just talk to me? Used to be, I could never get you to shut up. 'Course, that was a long time ago...." A lifetime ago.

"Hello, Robert."

Hobbes jumped. "Fawkes...." His hands gripped the armrests of his chair tightly, so tightly that his knuckles turned white. It was Darien's voice, but he didn't dare look to see who was speaking. He didn't dare move. He was afraid that he was imagining Darien's voice... and equally afraid that he wasn't.

"You're late, you know."

Hobbes frowned. "Late? What're you--"

"You missed the party."

"What party?" Hobbes was confused, now. Confused and frightened beyond belief. This was familiar, oh-so-familiar, like a tune he recognized but couldn't quite place.... His grip on the armrests tightened, his nails pressed so tightly against the worn leather that they cut small, crescent-shaped holes in it. His breath came in shallow gasps.

"The party Claire and I had, of course. You should have seen it, it was wild." Darien laughed. A cold, icy, evil laugh. A laugh that caused the hair on the nape of Hobbes' neck to stand on end, like the hackles of a cornered dog.

"What did you do to her, Fawkes?" There was a hard edge to Hobbes' tone, an undercurrent of flint. He had heard this conversation before, had had this conversation before.

"Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that."

Hobbes received a visual flash, a lightning quick image of Darien, an unnerving grin on his face. All teeth, corners of the mouth turned up, head tilted down to increase the menacing effect, silver eyes gleaming in the darkness -- and then the image disappeared, and Hobbes was once again looking at an empty wall.

"I'd let you ask her yourself, but I don't think she'll talk to you. The people she talks to now, even I can't see." There was that laugh again.

The muscles in Hobbes' jaw tightened. "Damnit, Fawkes, take me to her or I'll pop a cap in your skull!" He didn't have a gun, hadn't been allowed one ever since he and the others had been admitted here all those years ago. But he had had a gun the first time this conversation had taken place. And it had been aimed right at Darien's head, right at those silver eyes and that malevolent grin.

"Alright, alright, I get the message." Footsteps. Were those footsteps? Two sets of them, one of them his and the other belonging to.... Crap. Even after all this time he recognized Darien's tread.

The footsteps stopped, and Hobbes was filled with a nameless dread. "Claire?"

Hobbes' eyes instinctively swiveled first one way, then the other, looking for someone he knew wasn't there. But then, in another blinding flash of memory, she was. She was sitting on the floor in a corner of Darien's bathroom, the front of her shirt ripped open to reveal her bruised and bloody torso, and the blood, the blood was everywhere....

"Claire!" Oh God, oh God, no....

She wasn't dead, though. He could tell from the soft rising and falling of her chest, and the small movements as her hand stroked... something.... What did she have in her lap? He couldn't tell so he moved closer, his brow knitting as he tried to get a better view. When he realized what it was, he gagged. It was Claire's dog. Or rather, it had been. Now it was little more than a pile of matted fur, broken bones, and pulpy flesh. The blood he saw hadn't been Claire's, or at least, not all of it. A great deal of it had come from the broken heap she held in her arms.

Claire began to hum, a simple children's lullaby that seemed completely ridiculous under the circumstances. She paused for a moment as if listening to someone, then laughed. "No, that isn't how you do it at all. You have to bring your voice up an octave...." she began to sing, a soft mournful tune that caused Hobbes' blood to run cold. He took a shuddering breath, ran a hand across his face... and then Claire was gone, and he was back in the hospital.

"Fawkes... how could you do that to her? How the hell could you do that to her?" Hobbes' voice was filled with anguished fury. 

He remembered some of what had happened that day. He knew that he had shot Darien, knew that Darien had lost his balance and fallen backwards, out of a window. Knew that Darien almost died, and that even after he recovered physically his mind had never returned. Knew that the gland had been damaged by the fall, essentially rendering it useless, which was the only reason Darien hadn't been slaughtered eighteen years ago on the operating table.

He had tried to block out the other memories for years. They were simply too traumatic. But hearing Darien's voice had brought everything back.

He had been so disturbed by the sight of Claire that for one telltale second he forgot to pay attention to Darien. He realized his mistake only after he felt one of Darien's hands wrapping around his throat, the other one trying to take his gun. Hobbes had squeezed the trigger instinctively, and shot himself in the foot. Darien had found that amusing, but he didn't find it nearly as funny when Hobbes managed to regain enough control of the gun to aim it in Darien's general direction as it went off again.

Hobbes couldn't resist any longer; he had to look. He had to know whether Darien was really speaking, or whether this was just in his head. His breath caught in his throat as he turned, unsure of which scenario would be worse.

Darien sat there, staring off into space just like always. Hobbes heaved a sigh of relief and ran a hand across his stubble-ridden chin. It was all in his head, just memories and hallucinations. He could handle that....

And then Darien turned and looked directly into Hobbes' eyes, the same menacing grin on his face that had been there eighteen years ago. "Fooled you."

Hobbes leapt to his feet, backing away from those piercing eyes. He had thought he had grown used to them over the past eighteen years, but in all that time they had never been focused on _him_. Now they were every bit as disconcerting as they had been the first time he had seen them. "Shit!" He clenched his fists as he attempted to regain his composure, mentally berating himself for his show of fear. It was too late, now, though. There was no point in trying to hide his discomfort. "Jeez, Fawkes, what're you tryin' to do, give me a freakin' heart attack?"

Darien's lip curled up in a contemptuous sneer. "Aw, what's the matter, did I scare the poor little Hobbesy?"

Hobbes tensed. "Where've you been all this time?" Both men knew it wasn't a question of where he had been physically.

Darien laughed. "In Hell. Where else? I've been to Hell and back again."

Hobbes' voice was cold and uncompromising as he said, "You shoulda stayed there."

"But I thought you wanted to talk to me, Robert. Or was all that just for show?" It was impossible to tell whether Darien was just mocking Hobbes or genuinely hurt. "C'mon, you're not still mad about what I did to Claire, are you?" He stuck his lower lip out in a pout. "That was ages ago, man!"

Hobbes could feel the blood rushing to his face. "You raped her, almost killed her! You freakin' _drove her insane_!"

Darien shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. "So?"

Hobbes pulled back his fist and sent it flying toward Darien's face. And Darien grabbed it. Hobbes' eyes widened as he looked from Darien's hands to the empty restraints, which he could now tell had been worked loose from their moorings, and then back up at Darien's face. Darien just watched, an amused expression playing across his features.

"Surprised?" Darien didn't wait for Hobbes to reply. "Like you said when you came in, it's been a while. I've been back for weeks now. Plenty of time for me to get outta that thing." He stood to his feet slowly, still holding Hobbes' hand in an iron grip, looking very satisfied with himself. "You should see the look on your face."

Hobbes took a deep breath and glared straight into Darien's eyes. "If you do anything to me, they'll lock you up and throw away the key."

Darien snorted. "C'mon, Hobbesy, I'm a little more intelligent than that. Why would they even think of locking me up? I'm a catatonic now, remember?" He smirked. "Besides, these guys are lazy. They wouldn't even bother investigating a suicide." Darien began to muscle Hobbes toward the lone window in the darkened room. "Now, we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way."

Hobbes made no response, instead wrenching his arm from Darien's grip and making a break for the door. Darien had been anticipating this, however, and leapt after him, shoving him to the ground.

"The hard way, then," Darien hissed, pulling Hobbes up off of the ground roughly and shoving him toward the window. Hobbes slammed against the glass, which shattered with a loud crash, and only just managed to keep from falling backwards to the ground below. His glass-bitten fingertips gripped the window-frame as he tried to regain his balance. But barely a moment later Darien's hands locked around his throat, cutting off his breath and pushing him farther out of the window.

"Faw-kes," Hobbes rasped, trying desperately to suck in a breath.

"It's your turn to go to Hell, Robert," Darien hissed.

Shouts began to ring out in the hall outside of the room. Obviously, someone had either heard the breaking glass or seen Hobbes hanging out of the window. Darien whirled around, uttering a wordless growl, and Hobbes used the opportunity to bring up a knee into Darien's groin. Darien collapsed to the ground, howling in pain, and Hobbes pulled himself back inside the window, gasping for breath and running a hand across his throat. He rushed over to the door just as it flung open and a couple of orderlies rushed in.

"Thank God," Hobbes said, sagging against a wall in relief, "he was trying to kill me!"

The first man, the one who seemed to be in charge, glanced around the room and then fixed Hobbes with a suspicious look. "Who was trying to kill you, Mr. Hobbes?"

Hobbes gave the man a disbelieving look. "Whaddaya mean, who? Fawkes! He's right over there!" Hobbes turned to point at where Darien had been lying on the ground just moments before, but there was nothing there but broken glass. He glanced around, his eyes narrowing suspiciously, and hissed sharply when he saw that Darien was sitting in that chair, the same one he had been sitting in when Hobbes had entered the room, staring straight ahead, his face devoid of all emotion.

The orderly crossed his arms, his expression stern. "Would you care to rephrase your story, Mr. Hobbes?"

Hobbes huffed in exasperation. "Of course not! He's faking, you idiot!"

"Yeah, just like he's been faking for the last eighteen years." Without skipping a beat the orderly continued, "Did you or did you not just attempt to throw yourself out of the window, Mr. Hobbes?"

"Hell, no! It was Fawkes, he pushed me!"

The orderly turned to his companion and gave him a knowing look. "We have a suicidal, here. Take him down to Ward 3 and give him a sedative."

Hobbes took a step backward, and jerked away when the two men tried to grab him. "I don't need a sedative! I'm tellin' you, he tried to kill me!"

The man in charge seized hold of Hobbes' wrist and said in a bored tone, "Whatever you say, Mr. Hobbes." The other orderly grabbed hold of Hobbes' other arm, and the two of them began to drag him out of the room.

Hobbes struggled wildly, insisting, "I don't need a damn sedative! Get offa me, you bastards!"

Just before he was hauled out the door Hobbes caught a glimpse of Darien peeking over the top of the chair, waving obnoxiously and mouthing 'bye'.

"Did you see that?" Hobbes yelped, looking from one man to the other. "Tell me you saw that! Let go of me! Let go of me!" But the orderlies ignored his protests and continued to force him down the hall, unable to hear Darien's cruel laughter over Hobbes' screams.

The End


End file.
